The “Men In Black” Franchise

Emerging from the original “Men in Black” movie, in 1997, I thought that perhaps half the people in Times Square were aliens. And the Upper West Side was obviously full of aliens, too. Those people on Broadway, concentrating so hard that they seemed to be far, far away somewhere? Aliens. The central joke in “Men in Black” was so good because it was flexible and expansive and, in a lovely way, utilitarian: The aliens were not snatching our bodies and turning us into pods, as in the old science-fiction tropes; they were ectoplasmic creatures (created by specialist Rick Baker) from outer space who sought refuge on Earth from obscure intergalactic wars. A secret government agency—the Men in Black—hid them in ordinary bodies, mainly in the New York area. Well, not just in the New York area. Sylvester Stallone and Newt Gingrich? Definitely aliens. The visitors included a talking dog and a kindly-looking neighborhood jeweler, who turned out to be the king of the Arquillians.

The normalcy of the uncanny was the best part of the gag. Almost any banal object could be invested with unexpected cosmic significance: The ugly platter-like observation towers standing in the weedy ruins of the World’s Fair in Queens were actually a spaceship launch site. (“How else do you think we get them to Queens?” asked Tommy Lee Jones, one of the Men in Black. Well, that was before Queens became hip.) The supermarket tabloid front pages (“THE ALIEN STOLE MY HUSBAND’S SKIN”) were actually examples of good, straight, factual reporting. A certified monster, Bug, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, had taken over a human shape. D’Onofrio, with his enormous head and pre-occupied manner, is top-heavy and laborious to begin with. Director Barry Sonnenfeld pushed him a little further and turned him into a modern Frankenstein’s monster, who lumbered and smashed things.

The movie, written by Ed Solomon, adapting Lowell Cunningham’s comic-book material, was a parody of old F.B.I. pictures, as well as of “Dragnet” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and also the paranormal-on-the-cheap TV thriller “The X-Files,” a big hit at the time. In pop sci-fi, the Earth is always about to be annihilated, but in “Men in Black,” the prospect of calamity was no more than a throwaway joke. In this world of routine crises, Tommy Lee Jones, with his odd, rapid, off-center delivery, was perfectly at home. Jones always seems a little alienated himself, yet his seriousness conveys the weight of long experience, not all of it merry. In the movie, as Agent K, his terse and definitive manner upends the obvious. Will Smith, as his freshly recruited partner, Agent J, danced around him indignantly, trying to figure out what was going on. When they met monsters, Jones stared them down, and Smith screwed up his face and taunted them. They were funny together—a mixed-race odd couple from different generations.

A movie that sparkles with surprise should probably not become a franchise. But Sonnenfeld, who was not doing well with his other projects, couldn’t leave it alone. After five years, he brought out “Men in Black II,” a huge smash that was nevertheless hated by people who adored the wit of the original. The special effects, which were kept at a minimum in the first movie, took over: The picture was mostly whoosh and slime and klutzy physical jokes. Will Smith spent a lot of time falling down. Tommy Lee Jones, the great, creased, middle-aged natural hipster, had been replaced by a seeming imitation saying synthetic lines.

“Men in Black III” is better, but it feels a little desperate at times. Sonnenfeld has said that the clownishness of “MIIB” was a bad idea, that the material had to return to emotion—to the bond between the two men. In order to pull that off, Sonnenfeld and screenwriter Etan Cohen called on a time-travel, back-to-the-future plot: J has to return to 1969 to prevent K from being killed by a very bad alien (Jemaine Clement), with terrible teeth, who wanted to destroy the earth. Since we know that K wasn’t killed in 1969, the idea lacks even routine suspense, and the movie stalls out at times, as Will Smith stops to explain the complicated plot. Taking advantage of 3-D, Sonnenfeld sends Will Smith diving off the Chrysler Building. Smith also wrestles with a giant fish that lives in a Chinese restaurant (one of those bug-eyed Chinese creatures). Compared to the original, special effects remain a much bigger part of the movie.

Back in 1969, the young K is played by Josh Brolin, who tries to match Tommy Lee Jones’s sang-froid by going silent and just staring. But silence in itself is not Jones’s secret. Brolin makes his face a stone wall, but you can always see Jones thinking, no matter how quiet he is. Brolin tries hard, but he can’t fill the dead air. Barging around New York, Will Smith winds up at a party at Andy Warhol’s Factory, where absolutely everyone is an alien—not a very good joke, since it’s what squares have always thought. The point that aliens were buried in the ordinary is gone. (The sequence will annoy people who take Warhol seriously; almost everything in it feels wrong.) In a better idea, the movie comes to a climax in a good action sequence staged on the superstructure holding Apollo 11 in place on July 16, 1969, the day of the moon launch. And there’s a gentle epilogue which comes as a surprise. The bond is restored between K and J in a way that none of us ever expected. This time, Sonnenfeld should really quit. The franchise has arrived at a nice resting place.

David Denby has been a staff writer and film critic at The New Yorker since 1998.